Martinez Wants Latest Castor Tv Spot Pulled

CAMPAIGN 2004

An angry Mel Martinez demanded Wednesday that Democratic U.S. Senate rival Betty Castor retract her latest ad, which accuses the Republican of being a hypocrite in his attacks on her.

In a conference call with reporters, Martinez said the spot that links terrorism suspect and former college professor Sami Al-Arian to him and President Bush is "outrageous" and shouldn't be allowed to run.

The ad displays a photo of Al-Arian's family with President Bush at the Plant City Strawberry Festival in 2000 while a narrator notes that Al-Arian campaigned for Bush when Martinez was co-chair of the president's campaign in the state.

Al-Arian also was invited to the Bush White House in 2001, five years after Castor put him on leave for terrorism accusations when she was president of the University of South Florida.

Castor's campaign refused to take down the spot, saying it was a "legitimate and fair" response to Martinez's attacks on Castor for not firing Al-Arian.

"It's a double standard and hypocritical when you accuse someone of doing something heinous for having a relationship with this individual and then say it doesn't matter if you and your own boss have a relationship with the same man," said spokesman Dan McLaughlin.

Although both candidates, who are locked in a tight race, have stumped on issues from health care and hurricane relief, the latest go-round shows that the Al-Arian issue has taken on a life of its own.

And like Frankenstein's monster, it is a topic that those who created it can't quite control.

Castor tried to defuse the situation that haunted her in the Democratic primary by noting in a late September ad that she took action on the allegations Al-Arian was raising money for anti-Israel terrorists by putting him on leave in 1996.

She reinstated him two years later, saying she couldn't fire him without an arrest. Her successor fired him last year, after he was indicted on federal charges. He is now awaiting trial.

Martinez, who has made fighting terrorism his top issue, blasted Castor for not doing enough once her ad aired.

The attack has since been tempered by revelations that Bill West, a former Immigration and Naturalization agent who appeared in the Martinez spot, helped plan the raid that removed Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives' home. Martinez's campaign called those agents "armed thugs" in a news release last month before apologizing for the term.

Wednesday, Martinez said that stumble was irrelevant to the issue of Castor not taking strong enough action.

"I would have at least spoken out [against Al-Arian]," he said. "I would have made every effort to remove him."

Just how much voters are paying attention to the back-and-forth is hard to gauge, but even those who care about homeland security would have a hard time figuring out the candidates' policies based on this battle, said Aubrey Jewett, a political-science professor at the University of Central Florida.

"From my perspective, I don't think this will matter to almost any voter," Aubrey said.